With Baseball Up in the Air, What About the Ballpark Peanuts?

Fans might not think too much about how they look or the quality of their oil, but Dan Ward does. A farmer in Clarkton, N.C., he grows jumbo Virginias in the southeast corner of the state.

They’re not the easiest peanut to grow. The delicate shells crack more easily than the runners destined for peanut butter, so pulling them from the ground takes more time and patience. Growing them takes a special touch, too.

“You have to plant them in a loamy soil with enough sand, so the hull is bright,” he said. “I like for them to shine in the bag.”

About 400 of the 1,650 acres he plants every year are given over to ballpark peanuts. Last year’s crop — the one sitting in storage at Hampton Farms right now — was a particularly good one.

“Those peanuts should taste awesome,” he said. “When do get a crop like that, you want people to enjoy them.”

He had already sold that crop when the country began shutting down in March. But he didn’t escape the effects of the shutdown. By late April, with the coronavirus turning agriculture on its head, he had to calculate how many ballpark peanuts to plant in May for the 2021 baseball season.

He also grows corn and soybeans, so his peanut strategy depended in part on the volatile trade war with China and how much that country might buy. He had to figure in the price of other crops grown in his region and how the coronavirus would hit neighboring hog and poultry farmers, who buy some of his corn for feed. “It is a wild picture,” he said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/dining/peanuts-baseball.html